3. Repentance is necessary for all sins
heaven. Yet as serpents you lick the dust. Baruch, a good man, was taxed with this: "do you seek great things for yourself?" (Jer 45.5).
(i) Repent of your divisions. These are a blot in your coat of armor.
They make others stand aloof from religion. Separating from the wicked imitates Christ who was "separate from sinners" (Heb 7.26).
But for the godly to divide themselves and look askew at one another, if we had as many eyes as there are stars, they would be too few to weep for this! Divisions eclipse the church's beauty and weaken her strength. God's Spirit brought cloven tongues of fire among the saints (Act 2.3), but the devil has brought cloven hearts.
Surely this deserves a shower of tears:
Quis talia fando Temperet a lachrymis?
(j) Repent for the iniquity of your holy things. How often have the services of God's worship been frozen with formality and soured with pride? There have been more of the peacock's plumes than the mourning of the dove. It is sad that duties of religion should be made a stage for vainglory to act upon. O Christians, there is such a thick crust on your duties that it may be feared there is little meat left in them for God to feed upon.
Behold: repenting work is cut out for the best. And what may make the tide of grief swell higher is to think that the sins of God's people provoke God more than the sins of others (Deu 32.19). The sins of the wicked pierce Christ's side. The sins of the godly go to his heart.
Peter's sin, being acted out against so much love, was most unkind, which made his cheeks furrowed with tears: "When he thought about it, he wept" (Mar 14.72).
3. Repentance is necessary for all sins Let us be deeply humbled and mourn before the Lord for original sin.
We have lost that pure quintessential frame of soul that we once had.
Our nature is vitiated with corruption. Original sin has diffused itself as a poison into the whole man, like the Jerusalem artichoke which, wherever it is planted, soon overruns the ground. There are no worse natures in hell than we have. The hearts of the best are like Peter's sheet, on which there were a number of unclean creeping things (Act
10.12). This primitive corruption is to be bitterly bewailed because we are never free from it. It is like an underground spring which,
though it is not seen, still runs. We may as well stop the beating of the pulse as to stop the motions to sin.
This inbred depravity retards and hinders us in what is spiritual: "the good that I would do, I do not do" (Rom 7.19). Original sin may be compared to the fish that Pliny speaks of, a sea-lamprey,
51 which cleaves to the keel of the ship and hinders it when it is under sail. Sin hangs weights upon us so that we move slowly to heaven. O this adherence of sin! Paul shook the viper which was on his hand into the fire (Act 28.5), but we cannot shake off original corruption in this life. Sin does not come as a lodger for a night, but as an indweller:
"sin that dwells in me" (Rom 7.17). It stays with us like the hectic fever of tuberculosis; though the sufferer changes the air, he still carries his disease with him. Original sin is inexhaustible. This ocean cannot be emptied. Though the stock of sin is spent, it is not at all diminished. The more we sin, the fuller we are of sin. Original corruption is like the widow's oil which increased by pouring it out.
Another wedge to break our hearts is that original sin mixes with the habits of grace. This is why our actions towards heaven are so dull and languid. Why does faith not act any stronger unless it is clogged with a sense of sin? Why does love toward God burn no purer unless it is hindered with lust? Original sin incorporates with our graces. As bad lungs cause asthma or shortness of breath, so the infection o f original sin in our heart causes our graces to breathe very faintly.
Thus we see what it is in original sin that may draw our tears.
In particular, let us lament the corruption of our will and our affections. Let us mourn for the corruption of our will. The will that is not following the dictate of right reason is biased toward evil. The will distastes God, not as he is good, but as he is holy. It contumaciously affronts him: "we will do whatever goes out of our own mouth, to burn incense to the queen of heaven" (Jer 44.17). The greatest wound has fallen upon our will.
Let us grieve for the diversion of our affections. They are taken off their proper object. The affections, like arrows, shoot beside the mark. At the beginning, our affections were wings to fly to God; now they are weights to pull us away from him.
Let us grieve for the inclination of our affections. Our love is set on sin, and our joy is set on the creature. Our affections, like the
52 feed on dung. How justly may the disease of our affections bear a part in the scene of our grief? Of ourselves, we are falling into hell, and our affections would thrust us there.
Let us lay to heart our actual sins. Of these I may say, "Who can understand his errors?" (Psa 19.12). They are like atoms in the sun, like the sparks of a furnace. We have sinned in our eyes; they have been casements lapwing, 53 to let in vanity. We have sinned in our tongues; they have been fired with passion. What action proceeds from us in which we do not betray some sin? To reckon these up would be like numbering the drops in the ocean. Let actual sins be solemnly repented of before the Lord.